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Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 6:23 pm
by jmkwatson
Good evening! I am a new forum member, and have come here to see if any of the more senior/expert members can help me.

I have been working for 3 hours, editing/proofreading a document for a friend in Open Office Writer ... no problem. However, when I clsoed it and went to re-open it, I received a message saying that the document was corrupt and unreadable. As you can imagine, I was stunned and horrified, to think that all of that work had vanished. I have tried a couple of recommended "repair" applications, but with no luck at all.

I am attaching the document ... Is there anyone who can help me to extract useable data from it? I have her original word processor file ... What I have (apparently) lost are all of the comments I had added in the margins (using the "Comment" command) about corrections, etc.

I was using Open Office 4.1.0 Beta, if that is helpful.

Any assistance/guidance anyone here can offer me would be greatly appreciated, both by me and by the author of the original document!

Thank you sincerely for your time and advice!
Murray Watson

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 6:50 pm
by RoryOF
Try this.

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 6:52 pm
by acknak
Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

The document you attached causes AOO 4.1beta to crash with an error message on the terminal:
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'com::sun::star::beans::UnknownPropertyException'

However, it opens fine for me with AOO 4.0.1.

I'm not sure what I can do for you at this point--just ask.

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 7:36 pm
by RoryOF
I opened it by starting a blank Writer file (in OO 4.1 RC1), then /insert /File. It also opened using an Archive manager. I suspect the problem may be caused by highlighted areas, but didn't study the file to verify the reasons for crash.

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 9:05 pm
by John_Ha
I too had a quick look and there seem to be two separate issues:

1 The file opens in 4.0.1 but not in 4.1.0 Beta. The developers will want to know that! (It is interesting that it opens in 4.1.0 Beta by Insert > File )

2 The file has a lot of changes recorded, but Edit > Changes > Accept or reject is completely empty so although the changes are visible, some of the change information has got lost. When I add a new change (4.0.1) that change is recorded and appears in the list.

jmkwatson: What system made the changes? Was it AOO? If so, which level? Or was it Word or another application? If AOO made the changes, then this appears to be a bug well worth reporting. If another system, then it could be an interface issue which is again worth reporting.

It appears to be an error in the XML coding as the file unzips with no errors.

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:02 am
by Villeroy
@ jmkwatson
Thank you for posting this example file.

I reported this as a show stopper for 4.1: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=124607

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:38 am
by RoryOF
A fix has just been posted to the trunk code. Hopefully this will make it to the release version of OO 4.1, which is currently at RC2 (this bug not fixed in RC2).

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:55 am
by Greengiant224
When opening the original file in LO 4.2.2 and AOO v 3.4.1 and 4.01 I was given the opportunity of using the ascii filter box.
The file displayed like this: (sample)
2. Observations on How These Teachings are Poorly Understood

Deliberate Ambiguity

So far, the research might leave one bewildered. The issues are complicated and confusing. According to Pius XII, we need to be able to work toward spiritual goals; simply having biological, physical life is not sufficient reason to continue treatment. So the question becomes: can a person with “merely reflexive responses” strive for spiritual goals? Or what about other people more generally? There are so many “what
[[[COMMENT BY Unknown Author (2014-04-05T16:11:22)]]]
if's
[[[---]]]
From this file I extracted the following info:
Author: Office 2004 Test Drive User
Creation time: 2014-04-01 05:46:00
Last modified by: Office 2004 Test Drive User (estimated)
Last modification time: 2014-04-05 18:16:43
Page count: 19
Word count: 7122
It looks like it was originally created with M$ Office 2004 hence the bad display of comments.
I tried the RoryOF version and it displayed correctly. :bravo:

Greengiant224

Re: Can anyone help me with a corrupt ODT file?

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 11:01 am
by RoryOF
It seems to be some error in the internal XML code relating to the range comments. Normally (older OO) a comment attached to a point in the text, but in OO 4.1 in addition a section of text could be highlighted and a comment attached to that. A fix is posted to main trunk code and will work its way into release shortly (I hope!).